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⚖💙 Trauma-Informed Care ❤‍🩹 ⚖
📔 Defining Trauma 🧐

Understanding trauma-informed care requires that we know the definition of trauma. While there are many clinical definitions out there, trauma presents in two main ways: physical and emotional.

Physical trauma occurs from an injury one might sustain. For example, if a person falls hard on a sidewalk, they may have strong knee pain, where the pain is the trauma endured. The pain could be short-term or long-term.

While all trauma deserves recognition, the complexity of emotional trauma makes it worth diving deeper into. As we know, physical trauma can be corrected with medication in many cases. Emotional trauma presents as any strong reactions to an event that occurred in our past which causes us emotional pain. Common to many, grief may cause us to cry, scream, or even shut down resultant from the emotional toll our losses take on us.

Physical trauma that we endure can also cause and coexist with emotional trauma. While the following is a strong example, it is unfortunately all too common in the United States. Those of us who endured beatings at any age or even parents who “smack the shit” out of their children can be traumatized both physically and emotionally. From the impact of seeing our parents “raise their hand” to us through to being struck and resultantly seen crying in public places, we are physically traumatized and emotionally traumatized due to feeling unloved, shame and being treated unjustly. In another unit, we will cover the differences in how trauma affects individuals in different ways and at different levels.

My YouTube video below gives a brief overview of what trauma is.